For most individuals monitoring, the state of their finances and tracking their expenditures is an extremely important and fundamental responsibility. Unfortunately, due to a lack of time, limits of currently available resources, and in some instances, a lack of motivation, many individuals have historically failed to recognize and accept this responsibility. However, recent economic events have reminded many individuals of the urgent need to determine, and monitor, the state of their finances, as well as identify realistic financial goals, formulate plans of action to meet those financial goals, and monitor progress towards financial goals.
Several computing system implemented financial management systems are currently available to help a user, or an authorized individual on behalf of a user, gather a user's financial data and/or process/analyze that user's own financial data into various budgets and/or reports based on various parameters that are commonly provided/defined by the user. Typically, these currently available computing system implemented financial management systems provide a user with financial data such as, but not limited to, the user's overall financial worth data, the user's income data, the user's expense data, and the user's transactional data. In addition, currently available computing system implemented financial management systems often allow a user to set spending limits/goals, or budgets, for various financial categories for defined periods of time, such as a month, and to identify unallocated or “discretionary” funds. However, currently, computing system implemented financial management systems typically present the user with budgeting analysis, and/or reports in the form of largely resultant data based on historical events. As a result, currently available computing system implemented financial management systems typically offer only time delayed and post event summaries of financial activity after the fact, i.e., after the transactional choices have already been made by the user.
While the time-delayed “reactive” monitoring of financial goals and budget analysis currently provided by computing system implemented financial management systems has several uses, it fails to provide the user with real-time monitoring and budgeting data at the time the user is contemplating a purchase or to provide a user with an indication of how a given potential purchase might actually impact the user's budgetary goals. Therefore, the time-delayed “reactive” monitoring of financial goals and budget analysis currently available often does little to help the user/consumer determine the effect of a given potential purchase on the user's financial goals or to help the user make an informed decision as to whether or not to make a given contemplated purchase.